News

[31 May 2015] www.alphalinux.org website is back

The website www.alphalinux.org is now up and running again, but any web links to content will need to be updated. Enthusiasts can now access content using this well-known domain. Special thanks to Rich Payne and Marta Greenberg.

What happened to the files previously on www.alphalinux.org?

You're in luck! The www.alphalinux.org website has been relaunched on a new platform (as of May 2015) and all previous web links will now be broken. However, you can download your own copy of the entire contents of the previous website, or whatever files you were looking for. This content can be accessed from the Former alphalinux.org content page. With thanks to Rich Payne and Peter Petrakis.

Linux distributions and other operating systems for Alpha

There are many Linux distributions and other operating systems for the Alpha architecture, some of which are actively maintained and some no longer supported.

Using Alpha today

SCSI hard disk emulator for retro computing

As Alpha is effectively retro computing, it joins many other older computers that require increasingly rare SCSI hard disks. The SCSI2SD card connects to a 50-pin SCSI bus and emulates a hard disk using storage on an SD memory card.

This has been tested by the author on a Compaq XP-1000 Professional Workstation. The SCSI2SD card is seen as a bootable device in the SRM, which enables it to be used to load the Debian Linux kernel. The kernel can then load the rest of the OS from any other device in the machine that it has a driver for, in this case an IDE disk attached to a Promise IDE controller in a PCI slot. By only using it to load the kernel this avoids questions on whether the SD card has sufficient performance for a regular filesystem.

Buy one

ICC in the UK have Alpha hardware available for sale (as of October 2014).

Alpha Emulators

EmuVM - available free for non-commercial use. (Not tested by the author.)

Alpha History

The Alpha processor was developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). DEC was later bought by Compaq, which then merged with HP. Alpha always had a reputation for excellent performance and could run many different operating systems.